Waste audit for Yeo Valley

Yeo Valley is a family-owned dairy company with a number of manufacturing sites in the south west of England. This ambitious and environmentally conscientious company aims to manage their waste in a sustainable manner, optimising re-use and improving recycling and material recovery.

Yeo Valley was looking for innovative ways to improve their sustainable and commercial performance.

The manufacturing sites generate a large quantity of liquid waste, as well as solid wastes including yoghurt pot packaging, organic material, hazardous and general waste.

The challenge was to suggest innovative and alternative solutions for dealing with yoghurt pot waste. Yeo Valley were spending a lot on their disposal of their yoghurt pot waste and it was important to identify long term solutions which are not only sustainable, but also can reduce waste spend. Another challenge was to ensure that these solutions can be easily implemented on site to improve the current processing systems which, in turn, would improve on-site segregation and reduce the amount of waste transported off site.

Our solution

SUEZ.scope™ carried out a waste audit at
Yeo Valley to establish processes for improving the commercial and environmental performance for the priority waste streams which are dry mixed recycling, food waste as well as hygiene, confidential and hazardous waste.

One of the objectives of the audit was to establish waste improvement processes and identify ways of reducing waste materials at source. The SUEZ.scope™ team also benchmarked internal operations and external logistics against industry best practice guidelines.

The results

The SUEZ.scope™ team made 35 recommendations based on the findings of the waste audit. These included internal process improvements, as well as improvements of elements of the supply chain.

SUEZ.scope™ identified recommendations for a closer view on optimisation including internal logistics and external transport, ranging from how containers were laid out on site to the technological capabilities of compaction.

The audit identified easy to implement solutions to apply a sustainable and resilient waste management system. The solution not only improved waste reporting but enabled more complex ones, such as, the segregation of hazardous waste from engineering and maintenance of equipment used to manage waste.

Other waste management improvements include implementation of best practice documents alongside creating template documents to be implemented at all the sites.

SUEZ.scope™ researched alternative and innovative packaging solutions for the waste yoghurt pot stream including bio-based and
plant-based plastics, sugar-based glass and
clay-based packaging alternatives. The team also made suggestions on compliance and created bespoke lean operational processes to achieve a cost effective on site solution for reducing yoghurt pot waste. The process involved separating organic yoghurt waste from the pots to maximise revenue from both streams.

When implemented the SUEZ.scope™ audit recommendations will save Yeo Valley in total 13% on their annual waste spend each year.

The SUEZ.scope™ audit was exactly what we needed, giving us a detailed analysis of our waste operation.

The audit has given us a fresh look our waste management and where there is potential to do more to reduce waste on site.

Tim Gardner-Engineering Manager | Yeo Valley

35

recommendations

the number of areas highlighted for improvement by the SUEZ.scope™ audit